01/05/2015

Hector Lombard versus Josh Burkman: I don’t get the hype behind Hector Lombard. His performance at UFC 182 did nothing to make me any less tepid than I already am. The bout was one-sided on paper. At this point, Lombard is a fighter who needs to be given a fight against a top-level welterweight. He’s simply too much for someone outside of the top-ten, or even the top-five, to handle. The bout turned out to be similarly one-sided in actuality as it was on paper. Although clearly overmatched, Burkman was fighting to survive from the first second. Burkman, though, did manage to expose holes in Lombard’s game that would make him vulnerable to elite competition.

For one thing, Lombard was incapable of cutting Burkman off within the cage and keeping him where he wanted. He simply followed Burkman around the cage. Yes, suck stalking makes Lombard look ‘alpha’, for those who care about a such meaningless concept, but he in no way did he display good ringcraft in his movement. Compare Lombard simply following Burkman around with Rory MacDonald consistently keeping Tyron Woodley in a vulnerable position throughout their three-round fight at UFC 174. One is a magnificent performance, the other registers as a ‘meh’.

Another weakness Burkman exposed—I write as if these weren’t already common-knowledge flaws—is that even though Lombard swung with power, but he merely swung. There’s a mighty difference between a good striker and someone who simply can punch with power. Lombard is in the latter category. Burkman, despite being put into a squash match, was still able to have some success in counterpunching against Lombard’s wild strikes.

Kyoji Horiguchi verus Louis Gaudinot: I love a good karateka. The flyweight Kyoji Horiguchi is a great one. Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t remember who Horiguchi was until moments before he walked out. Much like Lyoto Machida, Horiguchi was able to control the distance and come in with flurries when he wanted to. Gaudinot was never really able to deal with the distance Horiguchi maintained and gave the karateka plenty of opportunities for some good strikes. I look forward to seeing what Horiguchi can do in a division starving for talent with any fight with a win streak being fed to the champion in a manner that prevents rising fighters from gaining the experience they may need before entering into a championship bout. Gaudinot displayed some good submissions skills when he tried to take out Horiguchi with a standing arm triangle.

Brad Tavarers versus Nate Marquardt: Forgive me, I wasn’t paying much attention during this bout. I remember Tavares having a really good jab, but even that might just be me making things up.

Donald Cerrone versus Myles Jury: Is there anything more to be said other than the fact that Cerrone is one of the few fighters to genuinely make a technical turnaround in his career? Whereas Cerrone was once a text-book case of how lankiness can be a detriment, now he’s a text-book case for making it a strength. On paper, the fight was certainly a good one to make. It kept Cerrone busy while giving Jury a chance to rise in the ranks. At the end of the fight, though, Jury looked like he didn’t belong in the cage. Donald Cerrone dominated the fight from the first to last second.

Jon Jones versus Daniel Cormier: To start with, let me air out my biases. I believe that Jon Jones is the best fighter active today. I think that discussions of who is the greatest of all time are absurd. Each fighter is a product of their particular situations and environment. So comparing between those different situations is of little use. What is of use is to learn from everyone, and some are always better than others to learn from. Jon Jones is one such fighter. To see someone with his creativity and martial acumen compete today is a blessing.

Moving over beyond that frank declaration of my outlook, l found the main event to be something great. Bones Jones has always delivered in the past and now he shows no sign of slowing down. Moreover, his creativity was at display, as it always is. Jon Jones will always display a command of a large range of the skills defining mixed martial arts. He’s simply someone who truly can’t be flattened out to a specific martial art. Once Jones was able to establish wrist control over Cormier’s right hand in the clinch, Cormier’s offensive capabilities in the clinch, where much of the fight was fought, withered. The same could not be said of any single one of Jon Jones’ limbs. He even tried to pull guard at the end of the third round. Although, it’s a move one would normally be disappointed with, with someone as skilled as Jones, it’s simply interesting!

One of the defining attributes of the fight, in my eyes, is how much Jon Jones worked Cormier’s body. Mixed martial arts all too often degenerates into wild head-hunting. Fighters forget that the body presents a large target that can be worked to secure later opportunities. One needn’t look further than Stipe Miocic’s failure to work Junior dos Santos’ body in their earlier engagement at UFC on FOX 13 to notice the opportunities that are neglected by only head-hunting. Cormier was able to successfully put into play his stated plan to keep the pressure on Jones and in keep the fight in an inside range. But in doing, so though, he provided plenty of opportunities for Jones to slip in strikes to the body as Cormier closed the range in a straight line (more on that at the bottom).

The fight was competitive when Cormier was able to keep the pace and to keep working in the clinch. But in rounds four and five, Jones came out as the king of the grind. To simply attribute that to Cormier gassing would be to neglect the importance of shots to the body and good body work to sapping an opponent’s ability to continue. The simple fact is that during the first three rounds, Cormier took a worrying amount of strikes to the body. A single great knee can change the tone of a fight within the clinch. Cormier, someone who in his previous career hasn’t reacted well to shots to the body, took a couple of those. Leaves much to be desired. Nor is it about wrestling per se. It’s also about an under appreciated part of boxing: movement. Jon Jones doesn’t have the holes in his game. His performance against Glover Teixera illustrated that he has a stellar in-fighting game and that he knows how to fight up against the game.

According to “Fight Metrics”, thirty-six perfect of Jones’ strikes were to Cormier’s body <http://www.fightmetric.com/fight-details/57385188587c83b9>. Only eighteen percent of Cormier’s strikes were to Jones’ body. The idea that Cormier could simply reproduce Cain Velasquez’s mauling of Junior dos Santos (an all too widely held opinion on the internet) was based on a mistaken understanding of what made that mauling possible. Dos Santos’ style is certainly crowd-pleasing, but his movement, especially when his back is against the cage,

The lesson I take from Jones versus Cormier? It’s hard to stay busy when you’re taking hard strikes to the body. Like leg kicks, those strikes all too often won’t pay off in the first three rounds, but they’re indispensable in longer bouts that become questions of endurance.

It’s certainly true, as Mr. Slack suggests, that Cormier could have done much better in the bout had he used more lateral movement to prevent Jones from being able to strike him with knees and kicks as he moved in. I just don’t see how Mr. Slack can both argue that “Daniel Cormier's skills and technical ability are second to none” while at the same time arguing that “simple act of moving laterally… could have changed the entire fight”.

In his “Killing the King: Jon Jones”, the author describes how Alexander Gustafsson was able to have, even now, an unprecedented level of success against the champion through his frequent use of lateral movement. That is, or at least should be, common knowledge by this point. That Cormier couldn’t pull off such movement is a sign that, contra Mr. Slack’s suggestion, his skill, at least in this specific department, is second to that of Alex the Mauler. Therefore, the claim that “Daniel Cormier's skills and technical ability are second to none” is pure overstated hype unsuited for someone as usually as level-headed as Jack Slack.

The fact is that the “simple act of moving laterally” is a very difficult skill to acquire and has to be cultivated across years of training. While training for UFC 165, Alexander Gustafsson and his camp didn’t suddenly decide that he should integrated lateral movement into his strategy; rather, lateral movement, along with a slick jab, were already apart of who he was as a fighter.

Daniel Cormier simply doesn’t have the same skills as Alexander Gustafsson, especially in the departments most applicable for defeating Jon Jones. While that doesn’t mean that Gustafsson could defeat Cormier, a speculation for another day, it does mean that, in some departments, Cormier’s skills are second to Gustafsson’s and that department is in boxing. Maybe not the up-against-the-cage dirty boxing that Cormier’s camp, American Kickboxing Academy, is famous for these days, but certainly the traditional form of boxing that Gustafsson has an amateur career in. Skills aren’t just a matter of decision, they’re a matter of cultivation over time.

To suddenly expect that Cormier integrate the lateral movement that Gustafsson troubled Jones with without the years of training and experience that Gustafsson has in boxing is, in my humble opinion, to underestimate just how difficult it is to pull off proper lateral movement with all of the strikes that come with it. Gustafsson’s footwork is one of the reasons why I’m such a fan of his. Plus, in mixed martial arts, fighters will always be facing the dilemma of choosing where to put their training time. It’s not an easy decision and one that comes to define careers. As the rule of thumb goes, styles (and backgrounds) make fights. Cormier’s style and background are in the skills he displayed at UFC 182 come from where he has cultivated his kills. They are not the skills displayed by Gustafsson at UFC 165, which have been cultivated differently.

While it’s certainly true that, as Mr. Slack points out in his article, that the better man does not always come out on top, I would argue that the better man came up on top at UFC 182. (Really, Mr. Slack’s argument should be that we should be uncertain about the better man winning at UFC 165—an opinion I do not hold—but I digress.) I If we were to judge the better man by quantitative data points alone, we would need a sample large enough for a statistical predictor, like the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem, but that’s never happening in any combat sport. Such an effort would well exhaust a fighter’s career (and probably go far beyond it). Recourse to qualitative means is needed. Mr. Slack’s recipe for killing the king still holds true.

But the man to do that isn’t Cormier. It’s Gustafsson. Indeed, the entire article can be condensed in a simple sentence: “Do what Gustafsson did, but do it a bit better.”

Let’s just face it, as I wrote in my review of UFC 172, Jones v Gustafsson II is the fight to make in the light heavyweight division. It’s now up to Anthony Johnson to prove me wrong at UFC on FOX 14.

05/01/2014

Jack Slack has an amazing article at Vice: Fightland looking at Jones Jones' skillful perfomance at UFC 172: Jon Jones versus Glover Teixeira: Defanging the Snake. Slack gives great witness to the technique and span of technique which has made Bones Jones a dominant champion in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. From the shoulder bump to the cross-arm guard, there's just so much to learn from Bones' fighting, and so I recommend the article whole heartedly.

Also relevant is another Fightland article judging the current champions according to their invinicibility and achilles heel. Here's Jon Jones:

Jon Jones1. Invincibility rating: 97%

2. Achilles' Heel: Nobody has been more battle tested against the elite than the UFC light heavyweight champion. A punishing attrition kicking game, smothering hand and elbow fighting, and stellar wrestling: he's a nightmare match up for anyone. The 3% accounts for the possibility of getting into another boxing match with Alexander Gustafsson.

04/29/2014

I had the opportunity to attend UFC 172 in person this weekend in the boringly named Baltimore Arena. It was a small venue, but from the point of view of an onlooker that smallness is an advantage in that it makes everything just that much more intimate. My own proximity to the cage was amazing. Though there were three large screens close to my left and a smaller one (or at least one that looked smaller) farther away to the right, I thankfully could tell most of what was happening in the cage by my own eyes. It was only a few times when the fight went to the ground that I had to rely on the screen.

Anyways, the entire night was quite the spectacle with each fight bringing something interesting to watch and think about.

The night started off with Chris Beal facing off against Patrick Williams. Though an early preliminary bout, anyone who thinks that the preliminaries are just fluff to the main event and don’t come until the pay-per-view event starts missed out on one of the most intense knockouts of the night. Not even halfway through the second round, Chris Beal, who had been having the best of the standup exchanges, unleashed a flying knee that, with a loud thwack, sent Williams to the canvas:

Something so beautiful it deserves to be immortalized in marble. Just imagine that in the Louvre (where it belongs).

If anything, the sound was the most vicious part about it. No one in the arena didn't know the moment Williams lost consciousness and anyone momentarily distracted were immediately cursing their lack of attention as they watched him collapse.

Beal's flying knee was a thing of beauty and a good auspices for the night in both the decisive manner of the victory and the technical skill it displayed. Chris Beal started a definite trend among winning fighters: Thanking God. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.

The next fight displayed a lesson every single fighter needs to have drilled into their skulls every moment of training: Keep your hands up! Even though Charlie Brenneman definitely had the best performance in the first round, all of that work was nullified in an instance when Danny Castillo’s got a shot at the Spaniard’s undefended chin. All it took was that one shot for Brenneman to collapse unconscious. A video of Castillo’s magnificent straight right can be found here. I’ll let Bill Easlick, a coach for striking and mixed-martial arts over at Fairfax Jiu-Jitsu, deliver the lecture: “Stop reaching to parry! When your hand is away, it is not protecting your chin.”

So, if there’s anything to learn from UFC 172, it’s keeping those hands up! Just in case you need more evidence, here’s Big Nog, one of the best heavyweights to have fought in mixed-martial arts but one who is worse for wear, crumpling to a similar shot. Again, keep those hands up!

The next fight was between Jessaymne Duke and Bethe Correia which lead to Correia dominating for three rounds. For me, the most impressive parts of Duke’s game came from her judo throws. Not that surprising considering that Ronda Rousey was in her corner, but it was disappointing considering that Duke, sporting a new tattoo, had a ten inch reach advantage over her opponent. Correia was also able to deliver an unanswered barrage of kicks against Duke’s lead leg which left quite the bruise by the end of the bout. At the end, my final impression was that Duke needed to learn how to really turn her great reach advantage into a winning asset just as Jon Jones has. Luckily for her, Jon Jones was fighting that night.

Next were the lightweights Takanori Gomi and Issac Vallie-Flagg. And there was blood. Not a copious amount, the mat was never stained, but there was still a noticable amount. By the end of the bout, Gomi’s hair, dyed orange, looked as if it were dyed pink:

Tommy Gilligan - USA Today

Unsurprisingly, considering the general lack of blood in the other bouts, Gomi v. Vallie-Flagg took fight of the night. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to watch, and certainly helped prove why the preliminaries are as worth watching as the main card. This is mixed-martial arts we’re talking abut, and one of MMA’s great features is the uncertainty of where greatness will lie.

Next up was Joseph Benavidez versus Tim Elliot. Though Elliot came out strong in his grappling against Benavidez, he came out recklessly and paid the cost of recklessness to a guillotine choke which won Benavidez a performance of the night. Elliot was really good until he was being chocked unconscious, but he was still forced to tap and tap by slamming his feet against the canvas for his arms were trapped with Benavidez in a full mount..

With that, the preliminaries had ended, but it was already quite the night of performances. The couple that came in just in time to my left for the pay-per-view event had missed so much, and I bet would be eventually regretting. From amazing knockouts to skillful submissions, the preliminaries were simply amazing.

And so the main card started. Next up was Max Holloway versus Andre Fili and then Jim Miller versus Mederiros, both of them ending by guillotines with Holloway and Miller respectively victorious.

By the time it came for the middleweights Luke Ruckhold versus Tim Boetsch, UFC 172 had already been going three submissions straight, but this bout would be something I found particularly special. But before that detail, a random observation: When Boetsch walked out, I spent a minute or so figuring out what Metallica song the guitar riff from the song he walked out to had been copied from. It was a good song, but only because of “Sad but True.”

The first round contained one of those moves one could easily see in a movie and claim could never really happen. Though Boetsch shoots to take Ruckhold to the mat, the resulting sprawl ends with Ruckhold getting a reserve triangle on Boetsch. With Boetsch’s head becoming an ever more visible shade or purple, Rockhold is able to get in the right position for a Kimura, and to get the tap. It was simply amazing to watch, and the submission I was most excited to watch the entire night. I’m a bit shocked that Rockhold didn’t get a performance of the night for his very quick submission of the Barbarian.

USA Today sports

Though the Boetsch had promised violence and that both he and his opponent would leave hurt, Rockhold had a different plan and was able to end the match before taking any damage. That’s one thing I love about jiu-jitsu: the ability to win a fight without doing damage by simply forcing an opponent to either tap or to go to sleep.

The next fight was Phil Davis versus Anthony Johnson and this was actually the bout I found the least exciting, Though “Rumble” Johnson was able to effectively destroy any chance Mr. Wonderful had of winning the bout after Rumble had him on the mat after an early exchange, the fight was simply a one-sided beat down. Though it was one sided, I never felt that Johnson really had a plan for breaking Davis and would merely ride the three rounds to a decisive decision. Though decisive, I found it anti-climatic and, after Rumble established his dominance, the bout was timing down to a decision.

Onto the main event, the event that at least brought me to the Baltimore Arena: Jon “Bones” Jones versus Glover Teixeira. A piece of advice to anyone watching Bones Jones fight: Don’t yell advice like you’re actually in the champion’s corner. You’re not. Nor are you as good as either Jones or anyone in his corner at deciding the tactical course to take. Instead, stop yelling advice, sit down, and watch a mixed-martial arts virtuoso do his work. From elbows, spinning back kicks, axe kicks, oblique kicks, to dirty boxing in the clinch, Jones showed just how versatile he is as a striker. For anyone wondering why Jones is so dominant, it’s not just his natural athleticism, it’s the versatility and tactical intuition he shows in each fight that has made him what he is. Yes, there were problems with eye poking (problems I think can only be solved by either strict point deductions or changing the rules), but those cannot blind us to the work of art which was Jones’ fighting that night. It was a clear 50-45 bout.

I shall end my discussion of Jones v. Teixeira by noting that I enjoy watching Bones Jones fight for reasons I love reading an amazing book It simply opens my eyes to the things that are actually possible in mixed-martial arts. With a large amount of credit going to the great coaches at Jackson-Wink MMA, Jones’ fighting is as cerebral as it gets in the cage.

Although Jon Jones “doesn’t want to talk about that kid,” we all know what’s coming up next for the light-heavyweight division: Jones v Gustafsson II.